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Property boundary question from the public


BuckBrooke

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Greetings.

I received an email from a member of the general public in New Hampshire, with a question about surveying his property. Not knowing enough to advise him, he's agreed to letting me post the question/situation here for commentary. Thoughts?

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I have found what looks to me to be the original stone marker on the corner of my 50 acre property in New Hampshire.

The surveyor did not give it much thought and tells me he has plotted the actual corner some 30 feet away.

Back in the old days they could have been off by the 30 foot angle, so the question is how do I determine the actual corner.

Use his location or use what I think is the historic location?

 

The stone is squared on top and tapered outward toward the bottom.

It also looks hand chiseled.

There is another smaller squared piece that looks like it could have once been part of the larger stone.

The visible length of one piece is approx 12-14 long the other is 8-10 and i think there may be more of it deeper in the ground.

The property has not been surveyed in the past 100 years that I know of.

 

What would you suggest to determine the actual historic location, or would you just go by the surveyors new set post?

I would prefer to use the historic location if I can be absolutely sure of its original setting.

The surveyor has just received his licence in the past two years.

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Greetings.

I received an email from a member of the general public in New Hampshire, with a question about surveying his property. Not knowing enough to advise him, he's agreed to letting me post the question/situation here for commentary. Thoughts?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have found what looks to me to be the original stone marker on the corner of my 50 acre property in New Hampshire.

The surveyor did not give it much thought and tells me he has plotted the actual corner some 30 feet away.

Back in the old days they could have been off by the 30 foot angle, so the question is how do I determine the actual corner.

Use his location or use what I think is the historic location?

 

The stone is squared on top and tapered outward toward the bottom.

It also looks hand chiseled.

There is another smaller squared piece that looks like it could have once been part of the larger stone.

The visible length of one piece is approx 12-14 long the other is 8-10 and i think there may be more of it deeper in the ground.

The property has not been surveyed in the past 100 years that I know of.

 

What would you suggest to determine the actual historic location, or would you just go by the surveyors new set post?

I would prefer to use the historic location if I can be absolutely sure of its original setting.

The surveyor has just received his licence in the past two years.

I can't question the validity of the orginal marker or the surveyors work. However BOTH should have been placed to mark the legal description of the property and it all should stem from what that description says.

 

That's how you figure it out. The better the description was written the more you can be sure of your property line. Surveyors tend to be better about writing both the metes and boundes and INTENT than others.

 

They need to dig up that orginal patent deed, or legal description that first created the parcel. Then read it and see what it says.

 

An example. Thence N 65d 30' 33" E along a fence line common to Farmer Brown and Farmer Black" Someone later can read that and determine that the marker was placed 30' from the actual historical fence line, or that the orginal market was accurate. If all you have is the bearing, I'd trust the modern surveyor since you have nothing else to go on and they have better equipment than they did in the days of old.

 

A 2 year old surveyor normally has 6 years of experience. Minimum.

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While this question may seem simple on the surface, there is a lot involved with whether or not a found stone is in fact the true corner. Some (not all) of the questions that came to my mind as I read the post are:

 

1) Did the Surveyor know of the stone monument?

2) How was the property originally described? (Metes & Bounds, Fractional, etc.)

3) Are there qualifications in the property description defining a stone as monumenting the corner in question?

4) How was the corner in question originally monumented?

5) Is there heredity to the corner, or stone? (ie.: is it described somewhere else other than the original deed or plat?)

6) What is the property's relation to the adjoining properties? (Senior vs. Junior rights attributed to the properties and their common lines.)

7) Is there evidence of occupation verifiying the position of the corner? (Stone or set surveyor's pipe?)

8) The 30 feet difference is relative to what? (30' off on a 100' line, or on a 1000' line?)

9) Was the surveyor working for the landowner or a neighbor?

10) And, (this question offends many land owners) is the position of the stone monument marking where the land owner 1)
believes
the true position to be, or 2) only
wants
the true position to be? (They can be substantially different.)

The pure math of surveying is the same everywhere, but the State and local laws associated to surveying can be different. In order to correctly retrace a survey - any survey - a surveyor must combine his current findings in the field, the applicable laws and surveying methods used when the survey was originally created, together with the intent of the original survey and current laws and applications. Current laws may be applicable to whether or not monuments have more relavance or not over linear descriptions. In California (as in most States) an original monument holds over a line call.

 

As far as the 'new' license: two years of licensure does not mean that the surveyor does not know how to survey, or that his survey techniques and results are any less qualified or correct than someone licensed for 20+ years. Most States require a minimum of eight years of surveying experience prior to sitting for the licensing exams; some States require more than ten years experience. State Licensure means that the applicant has met the minimum State requirements to perform survey work in said State. Many surveyors work for more than the minimum number of years before sitting for the exams. (I had about 15 years before I sat for the exams.) With that, some of the best surveyors I know are unlicensed (but working for, or under, licensed individuals), and there are some license holders whose work I'm cautious of.

 

Simply put, there's not a simple answer to the question of which is the right/correct/true/originally intended position of the corner without a lot of research. If the landowner has doubts, he can ask the surveyor to how he arrived at the position of the set corner and/or why the stone wasn't accepted. The land owner can also get a second opinion by having another surveyor look at it. The landowner may also have to be ready to accept the fact that the stone may not be in the correct position at all.

 

- Kewaneh

Edited by Kewaneh & Shark
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Reminds me of a problem that we ran into. My grandmother bought a piece of property in upstate New York, in 1929. 66 acres. She paid $400 for it, with a mortgage. Columbia County. Not one of the Dutch tracts, where land was subdivided from larger holdings. This was pretty much subsistance farming. Most of the people left when Ohio was opened up for settlement. No survey came with the deed.

We spent most of August upstate for many decades. Round about the mid-seventies, our neighbor down the road said "Hmm... My deed from 1865 seems to show that I own the land your house is built on." Hey. It had been is his family for a hundred years. But, he was retiring, and thinking of selling off some land.

So, we did quite a bit of title searching in the courthouse in Hudson, New York, and pieced a lot of things together. It seems that there had been a survey done in 1878 (or some such date). But five years later, Tabor Roberts bought the five acres where our house stood from our neighbor's grandfather. And, at another time, anothr owner had bought the ten acres where my aunt built her prefab cabin from another neighbor on the other side. No one could afford to have another survey done, so the deed was very vague. We found the original survey, and the deeds where the previous owners had bought the other lots. And we pieced things together. 1945 aerial survey maps helped considerably! The land had not been farmed since the early teens, but the field lines showed on the aerial survey map. The 'wood lot' was a bit trickier.

In this part of the country, there are lots of fieldstone walls. Some buried by plow humps. When you plow, and hit a stone, you cart it off, and pile it on the fieldstone wall. X chains Y links so many degrees to a stake and stone near an old road. These stakes and stones were put there in 1865! And, remember that surveying is done horizontally, disregarding the slope. Possibly some trouble with a fieldstone wall that might have been rearranged on the southern boundary. But, the whole irregular map came together quite well, using our tape measure and compass, following the fieldstone walls. Somewhere, we have maps and aerial photos to show it. And we satisfied the neighbor when we shoed him the deed from his grandfather.

We learnt quite a bit about the area. New Brittain was quite a bustling town in the 1840's, when the stage route from Boston to Albany ran by. But it was mostly abandoned when the Ohio territory was opend to settlement.

My dates may be muddled, but it was a very interesting historic exercise. We found the grave of Alvy Waite (first recorded deed holder) in the Lebanon Springs Cemeery (not far from the monument to Samuel J. Tilden, who was the first presidential candidate to have the election stolen from him.)

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Harry

 

Welcome to my world! This is the kind of detective work that goes on every day in the practice of land surveying - especially in the Colonial States. While the picture most people have of a surveyor is the guy standing behind the three-legged whatchamacallit waving his arms at another guy down the street, the measurement process is only one (albeit very important) aspect of what we do. From my perspective, that's what makes the profession so rewarding - the diversity of physical and intellectual stimulation, and always some new twist!

 

Kewaneh's post is right on target with regard to the complexities that may surround what appears to be a simple problem. It is also important to remember that the end result of a survey represents that surveyor's professional opinion regarding the boundary location. If the property owner feels strongly that the surveyor is wrong, he has every right to seek another opinion. The courts will have the final say on which opinion will prevail.

Edited by Holtie22
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Followup questions/comments:

 

1. The surveyor is a very confident person, but he still uses a personal opinion about the questioned stone.

2. He used GPS from other points known on the neighboring properties to locate his designated position.

3. The positions he used were 2000 to 4000 feet away and one was from the bottom of a cliff.

4. The positions he found on the neighboring properties originated from range lines from the old King land grants.

5. The deeds all the way back to the early 1800s all refer to name of neighbors and do not have and proper measurements listed on the deeds.

6. I do thing you're right to get a second opinion.

7. The entire area around the questioned location is forest land.

8. The only map I found that makes reference to a stone in that area, is a 1938 blister pine rust map, without any other exact details.

9. Either location would work fine, but I am a stickler for detail and I think if the found stone was the designated location for the past two hundred years, then that it should stay the same.

10. If the stone was not the boundary mark, then the new location would be fine.

11. Is there any web sites that might have pictures of old monuments to use as a guide?

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First thing I would do is a Land Patent Search.

 

BLM GLO PATENTS

 

If it is in one of the 13 Original States is was done by metes and bounds.

One would have to research the Abstract of Title from beginning to end.

 

1. The surveyor is a very confident person, but he still uses a personal opinion about the questioned stone.

The Surveyor does not make the final decision,he only gives his expert opinion(s).

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